70 



NA TURE 



[November 21, 1901 



come to recognise its educational and industrial importance. It 

 will be individuals who will lead in this recognition ; and we 

 must therefore rely, as the Americans have done, mainly on the 

 public spirit of citizens. The reports of the United States 

 Commissioner of Education show that there has been in recent 

 years a steady increase, year by year, both in the benefactions 

 and in the Government grants which the universities and col- 

 leges have received, culminating in 1898-9 ithe date of the 

 latest report) in benefactions amounting to 4,400,000/. for that 

 one year, and Government grants amounting to 1,500,000/. — 

 facts which fully explain how it is that the great- universities, 

 which, of course, have been receiving the lion's share, have been 

 able to build up, in a comparatively short time, well-equipped 

 research schools in many departments of study. If we are to 

 do the same, we must not rest satisfied with the equipment 

 which the Carnegie fund can provide, but must supplement it 

 with a liberality which, if not individually so princely as Mr. 

 Carnegie's, will collectively exceed it in amount. 



And here let me suggest that the endowment of research in 

 Natural Philosophy in this university might well form the first 

 instance of such enlightened liberality. Tait needs no effort of 

 ours for the perpetuation of his name. By his scientific work 

 he has raised for himself, as a distinguished leader in the 

 advancement of knowledge, a more lasting monument than any 

 that we could erect. But of his services to the University and the 

 State there is no memorial. There are thousands of his students 

 who have drunk from the well of his inspiration and been made 

 stronger men by the draught. There are tens of thousands of 

 his fellow-citizens whose pride in the Scottish metropolis has 

 received new justification from his whole-souled devotion to its 

 maintenance as a centre of light and leading. Is it too much to 

 expect that they should found a research laboratory bearing his 

 name, and thus appropriately mark their appreciation of a great 

 Scotsman who showed by the exercLse of his own creative power 

 that Britain at least shares in the intellectual leadership of the 

 world, and by the cultivation of creative power in his students 

 did what he could to maintain her industrial leadership as well ? 



There would be little advantage in the possession of research 

 funds, however, without full freedom to use them ; and at 

 present they could be used only to a limited extent. Research 

 work is recognised in our universities as qualifying for certain 

 high degrees, so high that no one is supposed to be fitted for 

 them until five years have elapsed from the date of his having 

 become a Master of Arts or a Bachelor of Science, so high con- 

 sequently that they are taken only by the few. It is not recog- 

 nised as qualifying for the M.A. and B.Sc. degrees themselves, 

 and any time which may be spent by an undergraduate in investi- 

 gation is thus condemned by our regulations to be, so far as the 

 degree is concerned, " time elaborately thrown away." Nor is 

 it easy to gain full freedom to teach by research ; for when we 

 ask how the recognition of research study in the undergraduate 

 courses is to be obtained, we find that changes in regulations can 

 be m.ade only with the concurrence of the Scottish Universities 

 Committee of the Brivy Council, and that it is hopeless to expect 

 the concurrence of this Committee unless it is asked for by at 

 least two universities. It will at once be obvious that the 

 advocate of reform has an arduous task. For he must persuade 

 in succession his own university, a second university, and the 

 Privy Council Committee. And this procedure is requisite, 

 not merely to secure the de.sired recognition of research study, 

 but to carry out any large mea.sure of reform. It has obviously 

 been devised with the object of preventing hasty and ill-con- 

 sidered change on the part of any of our universities, and any 

 change whatever which does not commend itself to more than 

 one. It may be admitted at once that it is admirably suited to 

 the purpose ; for if we think of the correspondence involved 

 in the advocacy of any reform, the iteration and reiteration of 

 argumentation, the button-holing, perhaps even the lobbying 

 and " log-rolling," it becomes apparent that no better system 

 could be devised to dampen the enthusiasm of the reformer and 

 to perpetuate things as they are. 



It is perhaps improper in one who has only recently joined 

 your staff of te.achers, and may not be fully acquainted with the 

 advantages of the organisation referred to, to express any 

 decided opinion about it. But, as an old student, who for 

 years has been watching the course of his Alma Mater from afar, 

 and is thus in a position to let you see yourselves as others see 

 you, I may allow myself to say that the Ordinances of the Scot- 

 tish Universities Commission and the authority of the I'rivy 

 Council Committee seem to me to be millstones about the necks 



NO. 1673, VOL. 65] 



of the Scottish universities, which, unless the universities have 

 a supernatural buoyancy, must sink them lower and lower rela- 

 tively to the progressive universities of the world. 



The most important condition of the steady progress of the 

 German university has been the Lthrfreiheit , and the.corollary 

 insisted upon by the universities and recognised by the Slate, 

 that when the best available teachers have been selected they 

 must be supposed to know better than any external committee 

 what is to be taught and how the teaching is to be done, and 

 that consequently they must be free to regulate and modify 

 their teaching as knowledge advances and as methods are im- 

 proved. 



And, similarly, one essential condition of the progress of the 

 .\merican university has been its autonomy. Johns Hopkins 

 University, non-existent twenty-five years ago, is to-day one of 

 the leading universities of the world, because it put at its head 

 a talented educational reformer and gave him a free hand ; 

 and in consequence of a similar policy. Harvard, in the last 

 quarter of a century, has been transformed from being a leading 

 American university to being a leading world's university. 

 These two great institutions work on quite dilfcrent lines. Had 

 either required to persuade the other of the value of its organisa- 

 tion and then to persuade a Committee of Congress, it is safe 

 10 assert that the extraordinary development which both have 

 exhibited would never have occurred. 



The question of the relation of the universities to the Privy 

 Council Committee, of the advantages of individual as opposed 

 to collective development, of the kinds of change which ought 

 to be capable of being made from within, and the kinds which 

 ought to be submitted to an external tribunal — these are ques- 

 tions of too great complexity to be discussed in the last para- 

 graphs of an address. But when the introduction of research 

 work into the undergraduate courses is found to be among the 

 reforms which must wait for collective action and the consent 

 of an external body, it becomes obvious, I think, that the line 

 between changes which may be made from within and changes 

 which require approval from without has been so drawn as to 

 hamper unduly the development of our universities, and that it 

 requires to be redrawn in the spirit of progress. 



Meantime, as to the particular change which I am advocating 

 to-day, we need not despair. Reform in this direction is in the 

 air. Under the stress of the national industrial crisis and the 

 growing conviction that something must be wrong in our 

 educational system, tho.se educationists who have long advocated 

 it are securing to-day an attention such as they have never 

 before received. And when we find the Chancellor of the Uni- 

 versity of Birmingham, a leading Cabinet Minister, eager to 

 introduce research into his university, and the chairman of the 

 Educational Section of the British Association, our Minister of 

 Education, as e.ager to introduce it into his schools, we are 

 encouraged to hope that at no distant date the movement may 

 be fully developed which was inaugurated in this university 

 through the profound educational insight of Prof. Tait, and that 

 all our universities may be enabled to exert the stimulating 

 influence that schools of the higher education should do, not 

 merely on industrial development, but on all forms of progressive 

 activity. 



UNIVERSITY AND EDUCATIONAL 

 INTELLIGENCE. 



Cambriugk. — The Financial Board has published a pro- 

 posal that the University should purchase some six acres of land 

 belonging to Downing College, and adjoining the new buildings 

 for geology and botany. The site is practically the only one 

 now available for the extension of the museums, and it will, if 

 not secured by the University, be divided up by new streets for 

 ordinary building purposes. "The price is about 25,000/., which, 

 in the absence of benefactions, will have to be raised by loan. 



Dr. Anningson, Dr. Collingridge, Prof. \Voodhe.ad, Mr. J. E. 

 Purvis and Dr. Tatham have been appointed University 

 examiners in sanitary science. 



At a meeting held under the auspices of the Philosophical 

 Society on November 18, it was decided to invite the British 

 Association to visit Cambridge in 1904 or 1905. 



Mr. Carnegie has announced that he will give 400,000/. 

 more to Pittsburg, half to the Carnegie Institute and half to the 

 new technical school, the building of which will shortly be 

 commenced. 



